R. Lutece (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spindown) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
come_sailaway2022-06-08 07:51 pm
spindown) wrote in come_sailaway2022-06-08 07:51 pm
Coffee and Shopping
Who: Rosalind and any soul who is unlucky enough to run into her.
Where: Sand Dollars and the Sundries Shop
What: Harassing her roommate, shopping, having coffee.
When: June, before the camping excursion.
Warnings: Science nonsense and rudeness, probably quantum shenanigans and blood.
Locked to Phil
Rosalind woke up on this boat in a room that both is and is not her own, without her partner that both was and was not herself. The sequence of events that lead her here were harrowing but, in the face of a strange cruise liner and stranger occupants, she finds she actually misses them. She caught glimpse of her roommate when she first arrived, a strange fellow that she hadn't given more than a passing glance as he lie in bed, largely because he was not Robert and that was her greatest concern. Now, having finished muster and being freed from the bonds of whatever force compelled her to attend, she returns to find that she is, somehow, roomed with a non-biblical angel.
She considers the winged fellow as one might consider a particularly curious looking grandfather clock. She knows all the parts involved and, whether she approves of the aesthetic or function, it will continue existing just to spite her. Still, there's no call to be rude, and if she's to be stuck with a roommate it tracks that she should, perhaps, know his name.
"What are you called?" she asks primly, by way of greeting, and crosses the room to examine the bed and the various technological amenities.
Open - Sand Dollars
This ship may lack proper library facilities, be run largely on magic, and be staffed by ghosts, but at least it has coffee. It would have truly been intolerable without some ready source of caffeine and, frankly, she couldn't abide tea. So she sits in the little cafe, Sand Dollars it's called, and reads a terrible, trashy fiction novel about time travel while sipping a very strong, very hot cappuccino. She has a small plate before her filled with madeleines and, every few minutes, makes a derisive hum as she turns the page of her book.
Open - Sundries
The sundries store has a number of useful and useless items, but lacks quite a lot of the amenities she is accustomed to. Or, at least, the versions of those amenities she is accustomed to. It appears to have the lot of them in some more modern format, but they are not things she recognizes immediately. So, with a great deal of frustration, Rosalind spends quite a long time sorting through the items on sale at the shop. She turns over the packaging, reads the labels, reads the chemical composition information (one of the few modern touches she wholly approves of) and then moves down the line.
If you've never seen a Gibson girl reading various convenience store groceries like they're a fascinating novel, now you have.
Where: Sand Dollars and the Sundries Shop
What: Harassing her roommate, shopping, having coffee.
When: June, before the camping excursion.
Warnings: Science nonsense and rudeness, probably quantum shenanigans and blood.
Locked to Phil
Rosalind woke up on this boat in a room that both is and is not her own, without her partner that both was and was not herself. The sequence of events that lead her here were harrowing but, in the face of a strange cruise liner and stranger occupants, she finds she actually misses them. She caught glimpse of her roommate when she first arrived, a strange fellow that she hadn't given more than a passing glance as he lie in bed, largely because he was not Robert and that was her greatest concern. Now, having finished muster and being freed from the bonds of whatever force compelled her to attend, she returns to find that she is, somehow, roomed with a non-biblical angel.
She considers the winged fellow as one might consider a particularly curious looking grandfather clock. She knows all the parts involved and, whether she approves of the aesthetic or function, it will continue existing just to spite her. Still, there's no call to be rude, and if she's to be stuck with a roommate it tracks that she should, perhaps, know his name.
"What are you called?" she asks primly, by way of greeting, and crosses the room to examine the bed and the various technological amenities.
Open - Sand Dollars
This ship may lack proper library facilities, be run largely on magic, and be staffed by ghosts, but at least it has coffee. It would have truly been intolerable without some ready source of caffeine and, frankly, she couldn't abide tea. So she sits in the little cafe, Sand Dollars it's called, and reads a terrible, trashy fiction novel about time travel while sipping a very strong, very hot cappuccino. She has a small plate before her filled with madeleines and, every few minutes, makes a derisive hum as she turns the page of her book.
Open - Sundries
The sundries store has a number of useful and useless items, but lacks quite a lot of the amenities she is accustomed to. Or, at least, the versions of those amenities she is accustomed to. It appears to have the lot of them in some more modern format, but they are not things she recognizes immediately. So, with a great deal of frustration, Rosalind spends quite a long time sorting through the items on sale at the shop. She turns over the packaging, reads the labels, reads the chemical composition information (one of the few modern touches she wholly approves of) and then moves down the line.
If you've never seen a Gibson girl reading various convenience store groceries like they're a fascinating novel, now you have.
no subject
There's a flash of shame at clearly being seen as stupid. She wouldn't take it from much anyone else, but there's something about quantum physicists that so quickly put her in her place. Makes her feel as small as she had as a child, being poked and prodded.
Ava swallows, is quick to retract her hand and separate herself from that moment that isn't, back into the one that is. Where Rosalind is saying it's a pleasure.
"The collapse," Ava repeats, worriedly. "Of yourself?" No, no she doesn't want to think of that right now either.
"I remember," Ava confirms. "I can usually control which... instance I become. If I go left and right, and the left me gets hit, I move into the right..." It's difficult to describe, because it all happens so quickly sometimes. "So part of me might have died, in the explosion. But I lived instead." Unlike her parents.
no subject
"You can control it?" Rosalind asks and her brows raise in tandem. All her other questions are forgotten in the wake of this information and, if anything, she seems delighted to hear it.
"That is extraordinary," she says. "I was only able to navigate it successfully when fully removed from linear time. I can't imagine the effort necessary to navigate unfolding time with precision."
It's the highest praise she's paid anyone, perhaps ever. She's deeply impressed by Ava and, simultaneously, fascinated with her. This time, the collapse of Rosalind's forms happen very swiftly. The number of outcomes for this branch easily dwarf the other and, summarily, it is subsumed into her current conversation. It happens in a flash and Ava, perhaps, is the only one in all the world who can bear witness to what actually occurs.
The reality of the second Lutece, hazy and wreathed in sunlight, collapses in on itself and, like water being added to a pool, the solidity of this reality rises, everything gaining a marked amount of density as that one is folded into it. Ava, Rosalind, the carafe of creamer. Briefly, everything is twice its normal quality and then those spare atoms drift, fading into probability and atomic motion, spinning off and collapsing or becoming something else in their transition.
Rosalind takes it with only a mild stagger, as her other self is folded in and grimaces as the second reality is written onto her brain. Her nose will bleed in a moment, she expects, but she cannot bring herself to mind. Not while chatting with the human embodiment of quantum mechanics.
"Say--does--" She pauses here, her question urgent but her headache spiking. "Does magic seem to affect your abilities?"
no subject
"In a way," Ava admits, "the way somebody might control breathing or blinking. It's more reflexive than a conscious choice. But it took awhile for my mind to make sense of navigating it all. Luckily I was young..." Unlucky, as well. But it gave her a decent advantage of adapting to it, while her brain was still in the process of building itself.
She wants to ask how the woman got removed from linear time, but she can feel the sudden weight of reality folding back in on itself around Rosalind, with the disappearance of her second, and Ava gives a small wince as she shifts herself intangible to escape it. Waits for everything to settle, and shakes her head uneasily.
But Rosalind just... moves right on past it, as if nothing at all happened. Ava grabs for her coffee, finally remembering it, takes a sip because she really needs something to ground herself right now. "Magic," she scoffs, because they're surrounded by it but she still refuses to quite understand it. "There's some sort of... magic wards? Sigils? That protect areas of the ship from even my ability to slip through matter. And I've been... assured that the degradation of my condition has been. Paused. That's the only effects I'm aware of."
no subject
"Yes, it's absurd, isn't it?" Rosalind asks from behind her small fistful of napkins. It is a largely rhetorical question. "The fact that magical nonsense exacerbates my condition is evidence enough that it is not magical at all, but thus far, I've found few people who concur."
Her tone says how much she appreciates that, also how little their overall agreement means to her. Ava's agreement, however, suddenly means a great deal. Rosalind is, all at once, in the unusual position of needing to court it.
"If you would like, once I've had time to build proper equipment, I would be more than happy to monitor and record benchmarks of your condition. For the purposes of veracity if nothing else?"
It might be impolite to offer to scientifically track someone but, if it is, Rosalind has never been called out on it. It is her specialty.
no subject
"You'll find a lot of resistance, many of the passengers have some sort of magic they use from their own worlds. But I don't understand how ones with such widely differing principles can work within the same system. So I've concluded it's all an illusion." Because it's the only thing that makes sense to her.
The offer has Ava curious, and normally she wouldn't trust it from somebody she just met. But... Rosalind has a condition that's similar enough in nature that she views her as somebody that understands. So she considers, sipping from her coffee. This is all so much before she's properly awake. "Yes. Though I'm not certain where you'd get the... supplies to build proper equipment. You'll find the electronics here are... hollow."